1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to electric drives for piezoelectric actuators and more particularly to energy transfer between two piezoelectric elements for increasing the system efficiency of operation.
2. Description of the Related Art
Piezoelectric actuators and other high-capacitive devices require high voltage drive. Driving them linearly with a conventional amplifier requires a large reactive current and results in correspondingly high losses.
Improvements have been made such as in Skipper U.S. Pat. No. 4,628,275 to provide efficient power amplifiers for such devices. However the capacitive energy stored in the actuator which is recaptured and used to reduce the energy requirements of the actuator systems is subject to the same losses during recovery as during the charge portion of the cycle.